I had a friend ask if I would recommend a soil thermometer and one thought came to my mind – why buy a soil thermometer when I have a perfectly good meat thermometer that will serve the same purpose. As you can see in the picture it does a great job showing my my soil temperature. Here are some of the tests I did.

Temperature

Comments

Air

67 degrees

Soil regular in water

59 degrees

Soil with heat mat and covered.

94 degrees

Soil in covered tray with lights

directly on top of the plastic

74 degrees

The heat mat description says that it will only raise the temperature by 10 to 20 degrees, but you can see that with a cover on, it raised it 27 degrees – very impressive. Now I’m wondering what is the perfect temperature to germinate different seeds and do I need to buy a device to regulate the temperature?

I water my plants from the bottom and it’s interesting how cool the soil is.